Baldcypress Dendroclimatology in the Southeastern United States

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The history of climate in the southeastern United States is poorly known. In recent years, this region has suffered from prolonged, devastating drought conditions. Since the historical record of climate in this region is incomplete, we do not know if these droughts reflect a change in the climate of this region, or if these conditions have reoccurred frequently during the late Holocene. This proposal requests support to reconstruct the history of climate in this region for the last 1000 years using growth bands of long-living, bald cypress trees. The PIs have discovered 1000 to 1700 year old bald cypress trees in this region and during a previous grant they began to reconstruct the history of drought and other climate changes from their tree-ring chronologies. This research is important because it will produce: 1) long records of annually-resolved climate change and 2) baseline studies of the history of drought in a climatically- sensitive region of the U. S.